Passaic County, New Jersey
Based on Wikipedia: Passaic County, New Jersey
In January 2024, the sheriff of Passaic County walked into a Turkish restaurant and shot himself. Richard Berdnik had been the county's top law enforcement officer, responsible for the jail, the courthouse security, and a small army of deputies. The news sent shockwaves through a county that rarely makes national headlines but sits at the center of one of the most consequential political shifts in American electoral geography.
Passaic County is a place that defies easy categorization. For most of the twentieth century, it was a reliable bellwether, voting for the winning presidential candidate in all but two elections between 1920 and 1992. Then it swung Democratic and stayed there for decades. Now something is changing again, and what happens in Passaic may tell us something important about what's happening to America.
The Valley's Name
The county gets its name from a Lenape word, "Pasaeck," meaning valley. The Lenape were the Indigenous people who lived throughout what is now New Jersey, Delaware, and eastern Pennsylvania before European colonization. Their language gave names to countless places in the region—including the Passaic River, which winds through the county like a serpent, flowing northeast into Paterson before turning south toward Newark and eventually the sea.
Passaic County was carved out of Bergen and Essex counties on February 7, 1837. That date matters because it tells you something about the pattern of American expansion. As populations grew and spread, counties subdivided like cells, each new political unit reflecting the local interests and identities of its residents. Bergen County, from which much of Passaic was taken, was one of the original four counties established in the Province of East Jersey in 1683. Essex, the other parent county, dates to the same era.
Today Passaic sits near the northern edge of New Jersey, covering roughly 198 square miles—about 30 miles long and 20 miles wide. To put that in perspective, the county is slightly smaller than the city of Los Angeles but home to over half a million people, making it remarkably dense.
A Tale of Two Geographies
The county is really two different places wearing the same name.
The southeastern half, where most people live, is either flat river bottomland along the Passaic and Pompton rivers or the gentle rolling hills of the Watchung Mountains. This is urban and suburban New Jersey—the New Jersey of strip malls and commuter rail stations, of small cities that bleed into one another until you can't tell where Clifton ends and Passaic begins.
The northwestern half is another world entirely. This is the New Jersey Highlands, a rugged, mountainous region that feels more like Vermont than the state's famous Turnpike corridor. The highest point in the county sits on Bearfort Ridge in West Milford, at approximately 1,480 feet above sea level. The lowest point, just 20 feet above sea level, lies along the Passaic River in Clifton. That's a vertical drop of nearly a quarter mile within a single county.
West Milford alone covers more than 80 square miles—over 40 percent of the entire county's area. Yet despite its vast territory, it's mostly lakes and forests, a weekend escape for the urbanites crowded into the southeastern cities.
In 2004, the New Jersey Legislature recognized the ecological importance of this wild northwestern corner by passing the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act. The municipalities of Bloomingdale, Pompton Lakes, Ringwood, Wanaque, and West Milford were placed under special environmental regulations. The aquifers beneath these hills supply drinking water to millions of New Jerseyans, and the state decided that protecting them was more important than allowing unlimited development.
Paterson: The Heart of the County
The county seat is Paterson, a city of almost 160,000 people—more than 30 percent of the entire county's population packed into a single municipality. Paterson is one of those American cities with a glorious industrial past and a complicated present.
Alexander Hamilton himself chose the site. In 1791, as the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was looking for a place to build America's first planned industrial city. He found it at the Great Falls of the Passaic River, where 77 feet of falling water could power the mills and factories of his Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures. The organization's unwieldy name was typically shortened to S.U.M., and for over a century, Paterson's factories produced everything from locomotives to Colt revolvers to silk.
The silk industry earned Paterson the nickname "Silk City," though that era is long gone. What remains is a diverse, working-class city that serves as a microcosm of American immigration patterns. The 2020 census found that Hispanic or Latino residents comprised nearly 43 percent of the county's population—and in Paterson itself, the percentage is even higher.
The city's ethnic character has shifted dramatically over generations. The 2000 census recorded that 16.6 percent of county residents claimed Italian ancestry, 9.5 percent Irish, 8.1 percent German, and 6.2 percent Polish. These were the descendants of the great European immigration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By 2020, the county's racial makeup had transformed: 43.8 percent White, 11 percent Black or African American, 5.9 percent Asian, and 25.7 percent identifying as some other race or two or more races.
The Political Weathervane
For students of American politics, Passaic County is fascinating precisely because it has been so fluid.
A "bellwether" county is one that consistently votes for the winning candidate. From 1920 to 1992, Passaic missed only twice—voting for Gerald Ford in 1976 when Jimmy Carter won nationally, and for George H.W. Bush in 1992 when Bill Clinton took the White House. That's a remarkable record of predicting national outcomes.
Then something shifted. Starting in 1996, Passaic began leaning Democratic, and for two decades, that lean seemed to solidify into permanent alignment. Democrats won the county by comfortable margins election after election.
But the 2016 and 2020 elections hinted at another turn. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Passaic with 59.5 percent of the vote—a comfortable margin, but notably lower than Democratic candidates had achieved in previous cycles. In 2020, Joe Biden's share dropped further to 57.5 percent, giving him a 16.5-point margin over Donald Trump. That was actually slightly better than Biden's margin statewide, but the trend line was clear: Republican support was growing, particularly in the county's urban areas.
This pattern—urban Latino voters shifting toward Republicans while suburban White voters shift toward Democrats—upends decades of conventional wisdom about American political coalitions. Passaic County, with its majority-minority population and its mix of post-industrial cities and wealthy suburbs, sits at the center of this realignment.
How Passaic Governs Itself
The county operates under a commission form of government, which is worth explaining because it's relatively unusual in American politics.
Most counties have either an elected executive (like a county mayor) or a county manager appointed by an elected board. Passaic does neither. Instead, seven commissioners are elected at-large—meaning every voter in the county votes for every commissioner, rather than each commissioner representing a specific district. These commissioners then handle both executive and legislative functions. They make policy, pass budgets, and oversee county departments.
Each January, the commissioners choose from among themselves a Director and Deputy Director. In 2016, commissioners earned $28,500 annually, with the director receiving an extra thousand dollars. The commissioners also appoint a County Administrator who handles day-to-day operations. Anthony J. DeNova III held that position for 19 years before Matthew Jordan, the county counsel, took over in 2022.
Republicans haven't won countywide office since 2021, when Nicolino Gallo finished third in a race for three Board seats. That might sound like a loss, but in Passaic's at-large system, third place among three available seats means you win. Gallo's victory was the first Republican presence in county government since 2017, when Kristin Corrado left her position as County Clerk to run successfully for State Senate. Before that, you have to go back to 2012 to find Republican freeholders—Deborah Ciambrone, Michael Marrotta, and Edward O'Connell—all of whom lost their reelection bids that year.
The Roads That Bind and Divide
Nothing shapes a place like its transportation infrastructure, and Passaic County is defined by the highways that slice through it.
Interstate 80, the transcontinental highway that runs from San Francisco to the New Jersey shore, passes through the county on its final stretch toward the George Washington Bridge and New York City. Here it's called the Bergen-Passaic Expressway. Interstate 287 curves through the mountainous sections, providing a beltway around the New York metropolitan area for trucks and commuters who want to avoid Manhattan entirely.
The Garden State Parkway, New Jersey's famous north-south toll road, clips through the county's southern edge at Clifton. Route 23 runs through the western section, connecting the Highlands communities to the rest of the region. Routes 3, 19, 20, 21, 46, and 161 all pass through various parts of the county, creating a dense mesh of asphalt that both connects communities and walls them off from one another.
For those who prefer rail, NJ Transit operates stations throughout the county. The Montclair-Boonton Line stops at Montclair State University, Little Falls, Wayne/Route 23, and Mountain View. The Main Line corridor serves Hawthorne, Paterson, Clifton, Passaic, and Delawanna. These commuter rail connections make it possible to live in Passaic County and work in Manhattan, a daily journey that hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans make.
The Weather of the Valley
Passaic County has what climatologists call a humid continental climate. For most of the county, this means hot summers—the technical classification is "Dfa" in the Köppen system, where "D" indicates continental, "f" means precipitation year-round, and "a" signifies hot summers. In the higher elevations to the north, the climate shifts to "Dfb," warm-summer continental, where the peaks of the Highlands stay a bit cooler.
In practical terms, this means January lows around 19 degrees Fahrenheit in Paterson, with July highs reaching 86 degrees. The record low, set in January 1961, was negative 11 degrees. The record high, from September 1953, hit 105 degrees. Precipitation is fairly even throughout the year, ranging from about 2.9 inches in February to 4.8 inches in September.
The Numbers Behind the People
The 2020 census counted 524,118 people in Passaic County—the highest population ever recorded and an increase of about 23,000 (4.6 percent) from 2010. The county has been growing slowly but steadily for decades: the 2010 count of 501,226 was itself an increase of 12,000 (2.5 percent) over the 2000 figure of 489,049.
The population density is 2,818 people per square mile. To put that in context, the entire United States averages about 94 people per square mile. Passaic is thirty times denser than the national average, though still far less dense than places like Manhattan, which packs over 70,000 people into each square mile.
About 97 percent of Passaic residents live in urban areas. Only 2.8 percent live in what the census defines as rural territory—the lake communities and forest preserves of the northwestern Highlands.
The median household income in 2020 was $77,040, with median family income slightly higher at $81,873. But these averages mask significant inequality. About 13.4 percent of the population lived below the poverty line, and nearly a quarter of children—24.7 percent of those under 18—were poor. Among seniors, 11.6 percent lived in poverty.
The housing stock reflects the county's history. There were about 185,000 housing units in 2020, with only 4.5 percent vacant. Among occupied units, the split between owners and renters was almost perfectly even: 51 percent owner-occupied, 49 percent renter-occupied. That near-parity between owning and renting is unusual—nationally, about 65 percent of housing units are owner-occupied—and reflects the urban character of much of the county.
The Courts and the Law
Passaic County constitutes Vicinage 11 of the New Jersey Superior Court, headquartered at the Passaic County Court House in Paterson. The Assignment Judge for Vicinage 11 is Ernest M. Caposela. "Vicinage" is an old legal term meaning neighborhood or vicinity—New Jersey divides its court system into fifteen vicinages, each covering one or more counties.
The County Prosecutor is Camelia M. Valdes of Bloomingdale, appointed by Governor Jon Corzine in 2009 and renominated by Governor Chris Christie in 2015. In New Jersey's system, county prosecutors are appointed by the governor rather than elected, giving them a degree of independence from local politics.
Law enforcement operates at multiple levels. The Passaic County Sheriff's Office provides countywide functions: running the jail, securing the courthouse, operating a SWAT team and K-9 unit, and conducting detective work and crime scene investigations. But every incorporated municipality also has its own police department, handling day-to-day law enforcement within their borders.
It was the sheriff, Richard Berdnik, who took his own life in that Turkish restaurant in January 2024. The tragedy underscored a grim reality about law enforcement: those who spend their careers dealing with violence, trauma, and human misery sometimes succumb to despair themselves.
Representation in the Capitals
Three congressional districts carve up Passaic County like a pie. The 5th District covers most of the northern portion, represented by Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from Wyckoff. The 9th District encompasses most of the southern portion, represented by Nellie Pou, a Democrat from North Haledon. The 11th District covers the central portion and, as of early 2026, sits vacant following the resignation of Mikie Sherrill, who was elected Governor of New Jersey in 2025. A special election to fill her seat is scheduled for April 16, 2026.
At the state level, Passaic County's sixteen municipalities are represented by seven separate legislative districts. This fragmentation—three congressional districts, seven state legislative districts—means that the county has no single voice in Trenton or Washington. Different parts of Passaic are pulled into different political coalitions and represented by different constellations of legislators.
A Place in Transition
Passaic County is neither rich nor poor, neither fully urban nor suburban, neither solidly Democratic nor reliably Republican. It is a place defined by its in-between status—geographically split between river valleys and mountain highlands, demographically split between old European ethnic communities and new immigrant populations, politically split between its bellwether past and its uncertain future.
The question of whether New Jersey might become a swing state runs directly through places like Passaic. The county's shift toward Republicans in recent elections mirrors trends among Latino voters nationally, particularly working-class Latinos without college degrees. If that shift continues, it could reshape not just Passaic County but the entire political map of the Northeast.
For now, Passaic remains what it has been for nearly two centuries: a valley where the currents of American life flow together, mix, and sometimes change direction entirely. The Lenape who named it understood that valleys are places where things converge. They were right.
``` The essay opens with a striking hook (the sheriff's suicide) and connects to the broader political theme from the related Substack article. It explains the Lenape etymology, explores the county's split geography, provides historical context about Paterson and Alexander Hamilton, and examines the political dynamics that make Passaic a bellwether. The writing varies sentence and paragraph length for audio listening, spells out concepts like "bellwether," and avoids jargon while keeping the content substantive.